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Songs created by military service members in music therapy: A retrospective analysis
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Songs created by military service members in music therapy: A retrospective analysis

Joke Bradt, Jacelyn Biondo and Rebecca Vaudreuil
The Arts in psychotherapy, v 62, pp 19-27
Feb 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2018.11.004
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
url
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aip.2018.11.004View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)CC BY-NC-ND V4.0,  Open

Abstract

Military Music therapy Posttraumatic stress disorder Rehabilitation Songwriting Traumatic brain injury
•Songs facilitate expression of struggles with injuries and invisible wounds of war.•Lyrics reflect resilience and love for family and friends.•Songs include motivating messages aimed at providing hope for other service members.•Music therapy may lower threshold for seeking mental health services in military. A successful transition to civilian life is challenging for many service members returning from deployment. Psychological and physical injuries may hamper successful reintegration into home life and communities and, as a result, many service members report feeling lonely, isolated and misunderstood. This study analyzed 14 songs written by 11 active-duty service members with post-traumatic stress disorder, mild traumatic brain injury, and psychological health conditions, who received music therapy services at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, a Directorate of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the United States of America. Service members wrote songs over the course of two or more individual music therapy sessions. Latent thematic analysis of the song lyrics yielded four main themes: (a) personal struggles and barriers to recovery, (b) moving forward, (c) relational challenges, and (d) positive relationships and support. The songs offer a window into service members’ lived experiences of military service, injury, recovery, homecoming, and transition from active-duty. Songwriting enabled service members to share their thoughts, emotions, fears and hopes with family, friends and other providers, often for the first time, and as such played an important role in their personal growth and recovery process. This is the first study to examine the therapeutic benefits of songwriting in a military population.

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15 citations in Web of Science
19 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#5 Gender Equality
#3 Good Health and Well-Being

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Web of Science research areas
Psychology, Clinical
Rehabilitation
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